Zachary Galarian
 | This article is incomplete because it is pending further input from participants, or it is a work-in-progress by one author. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. Note: To contribute to this article, you may need to seek help from the author(s) of this page. |
His Excellency Supreme Autocrat Zachary Galarian | |
|---|---|
 General Zachary Galarian, in a royal-styled "autocrat" uniform. | |
| Supreme Autocrat of Belhavia | |
| In office September 5th, 1940 – May 21st, 1945 | |
| Preceded by | None. (Office created.) |
| Succeeded by | None. (Office abolished.) |
| General of the Army | |
| In office January 31st, 1936 – May 21st, 1945 | |
| Preceded by | Steven Herman |
| Succeeded by | Abraham Stein (acting) |
| Council Member, General Staff | |
| In office August 7th, 1934 – January 31st, 1936 | |
| Preceded by | Vovel Frum |
| Succeeded by | Alexander Nikofsky |
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 10th, 1895 Kingsland, Dakos |
| Died | October 3rd, 1954 D'aarz, Asland |
| Nationality | Belhavian |
| Political party | Federalist Party (1913 - 1928) Fascist Party (1928 - 1937) Independent (1937 - 1940/41) National Front (1940/41 - 1945) |
| Spouse(s) | Hannah P. Galarian [m. 1913 - d. 1922] Rachel Galarian [m. 1925 - w. 1954] |
| Children | Aharon Galarian Yaakov Galarian |
| Alma mater | B.S., Military Science, Freeport Military Academy |
| Profession | Military Officer, Politician, Functionary |
Zachary R. Galarian (August 10th, 1895 – October 3rd, 1954) was a Belhavian general and politician, taking power in a military self-coup in 1940, serving as the self-styled Supreme Autocrat of Belhavia, an office created in his regime, until he was deposed in a liberal military coup in late May 1945. When he ruled, Belhavia was governed under his ideology of Galarianism. He was arrested, tried, and found guilty of high treason and crimes against humanity, but had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment by President Yavin Leibniz. He died after suffering a heart attack in 1954.
Early Life and Education
Galarian was born to Adriaan and Gerda Galarian (neé Haak), both of Nijdelandish heritage, in Kingsland, Dakos province. His parents were upper-middle-income professionals: the elder Galarian was a local tax attorney and Mrs. Galarian was a schoolteacher at a local private academy, Kingsland Yeshiva.
Because of his mother's status as an employee, he was granted access to the yeshiva. Teachers reported at the time that young Zachary excelled at his studies and had a knack for strategy, tactics, and politicking.
He applied to and was granted admission to the Freeport Military Academy, the military's elite war college. Here, too, he skyrocketed to the top of his class and specialized in the emerging field of motorized infantry. As an officer cadet in the mid-1910s, he was exposed to politics among his peers. Coming from second-generation immigrant parents who were successful professionals, he aligned with the Federalist Party.
In his first year as a cadet, he crossed paths with a then-young lawyer and his future political foe, Matthew Rabin, as Rabin visited the school to see a friend.
Military Career
Galarian was commissioned a first lieutenant at age 21 in 1916 upon graduation, assigned to the 6th Imperial Rifles Division, which was undergoing a reorganization from a regular infantry to a motorized infantry unit. He quickly was taken under the wing of Captain Joshua Reiss, and Galarian followed his patron as he ascended the ranks.
He first saw combat when the 6th Rifles were deployed to the Weissland Islands in the South Akkadiya Ocean to crush the Weissland Rebellion of 1921-1923, a local revolt and attempt to secede from Imperial sovereignty. There, he witnessed the power of asymmetric warfare and a series of failed attempts by the Imperial High Command in Provisa to attempt to reassert operational control over the Weissland isles.
He wrote in his journal at the time:
June 22nd, 1922. My [Commanding Officer] had our company routed along a little-traveled road on the eastern edge of Kalos [the main island of the chain]. As our convoy rounded a dangerous corner, they struck. Bullets flew! Our men were taken by complete surprise: overwhelmed, confused, and ultimately incompetent. We outnumber, outgun, and out-organize these insurrectionists, yet we lose ten men for every one of theirs ... These so-called "hit-and-run" tactics are quite effective. Whoever devises a way to effectively counter them will become the preeminent military genius of this century.
Following in Reiss's coattails as well as his own competence, Galarian soon climbed the ranks. He was promoted from First Lieutenant to Captain in 1922, after Reiss ascended to Lieutenant Colonel and took command of the 6th Rifles' 2nd Regiment. In 1923, Galarian was promoted to Major and reassigned from being a line officer to a staff officer in Reiss's command headquarters.
Reiss took credit for a crucial rounding up of rebels in the last week of the war; the death of his superior in an ambush by the dwindling rebel forces opened up the rank above him and he was promoted once again in a rapid fashion. Reiss, now Colonel, convinced his superiors back in Provisa to promote Galarian to his old post of Lieutenant-Colonel.
Image as a Hero
Coming home from the three-year rebellion, Galarian and his fellows in the 6th Rifles Division were hailed as heroes. In the same period, he went from a First Lieutenant to a Lieutenant Colonel - an astounding jump for an officer so young. Reiss introduced him to several members of the General Staff and High Command, which opened additional doors for him.
Peacetime commission treated him well; between his connections and the honorable discharges of many of his peers for civilian life, new career opportunities opened themselves up to him. In 1929, Galarian become a Colonel.
Second Shelvay War
War involving the Joint Administered Territories, called since the 1870s the 'Shelvay Protectorate', erupted in 1930. Secessionist rebels supported by a local power of some import were threatening Imperial holdings there. Joshua Reiss, now commander of the 6th Rifles as a Brigadier-General, and Galarian, commander of the 2nd Regiment, were dispatched north with a full Field Group.
During the war, Galarian displayed innovative tendencies to outmaneuver the enemy with clever tactical moves and strategic deployment of front line forces. In particular, he rutted organized rebel troops using his favored motorized infantry and light tank supports in the Battle of the Western Territories.
With the war's conclusion in 1934, Galarian returned home to find an opportune chance for advancement. An absence in the General Staff combined with High Command's admiration of his strategic and tactical brilliance landed him the rank bars of a Major-General and a seat on the council of generals in the General Staff.
Emerging Powerbroker
He now outranked Reiss, and found a more powerful patron in the form of Federalist Senator Frank Posen, a strong advocate for increasing the monarch's powers and a leading traditionalist conservative who was Chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee.
With Posen's influence behind him, Galarian pushed for and won additional appropriations to modernize the Imperial Army with a shift towards an all-motorized infantry force.
Political Involvement
With his liberal arts education and conservative upbringing, Galarian leaned towards the Federalists once he registered to vote in 1913 at age 18. The military officer corps was a bastion for the Federalist Party, and Galarian was outspoken in his support of the party's pro-military and jingoistic agenda. He was on-track to becoming a life-long Federalist when disaster struck.
Flirtation with Fascism
The Fascist Party of Belhavia (FPB) exploded onto the political scene in the spring of 1922 under a young, fresh-faced ideologue, Andrew Rothson. The new-found Fascists stole enough seats from the Federalists to lead to a hung Senate, and formed a coalition with the Federalists to govern. Galarian, then off in the Weissland Islands, had nothing but contempt for the new party:
These so-called 'fascists' are nothing but ignorant, backwards thinking thugs. Their program calls for the acceptance of trade unions! The audacity of these fiends. They seem to be unhinged from reality...shouting about corporatism and 'organic society' - as if people can ever be defined justly under a collective! Certainly not. Individuals are just that - unique, free wills with their own temperaments and personalities. These revolutionaries are dangerous, and I cannot help but smile when their political fortune runs out....
Six years later, his world was upended by the murder of his mother. 1928 was characterized by the peak of the failed labor movement in the Empire, and a strike in his hometown of Kingsland had spun out of control. Angry strikers and labor activists attacked the wealthier section of town where his parents lived. His home was ransacked and his mother murdered in cold blood in the chaos.
Enraged, he drifted towards the idea of legitimate political violence the Fascists were advocating. By 1928, the Fascists had shifted rightward - abandoning their earlier, left-leaning syndicalism to embrace a more conservative vision. For the next 9 years, he quietly but stridently joined the ranks of a small but influential circle of Fascist-aligned military officers.
Reactionary On the Eve of the Coup
By the late 1930s, disillusioned with the failure of the implementation of Fascist policies in the 1935 Constitutional Crisis and being being patronized by the Federalist heavyweight Posen, Galarian would shift back to the right.
Instead of the Federalists, he identified as an independent reactionary. He was increasingly disguised with the political dysfunction that was gripping Imperial politics in the period, and hated the breaks put on expansionism and colonial enterprises by the 1936 Budget Compromise.
His inclusion in the halls of power as General of the Army did nothing to dissuade his growing frustration; it actually increased it.
One would think being head of the Army would be sufficient to reverse disastrous military policy. Nay, it seems. As much as Posen and I try, the frugal sons of bitches in the Senate - enthralled in their 'enlightened' opposition to our just policy of expansion abroad - have attempted to hold our magnificent Empire back. They are trying to undo my modernization attempts.
In the early 1930s, a conservative reaction to Fascist inclusion in the government manifested itself into a proto-paleoconservatism, which espoused an anti-colonialist, national interests-oriented political platform in opposition to mainline Federalist and Fascist imperialist and expansionist designs for the Empire. This "paleoconservative" movement soon became a rising force within the Federalist Party, with a more limited following in the Liberal Democratic Party. By 1936, these right-wing anti-imperialists had won enough Federalist and Lib Dem seats in the Imperial Senate to form a voting block enough to deny the pro-jingoist Federalist-Fascist bloc.
Despite personal lobbying by Galarian on The Capitol, the Senate voted down appropriations and authorization for empire-building projects in the Far East between 1934 and 1940.
It was the last failed vote in February 1940 that sparked interest in Galarian to begin a conspiracy against the Imperial Government. In the spring and early summer of 1940, Matthew Rabin had secured the Lib Dem presidential nomination and was polling first on a platform focused on non-interventionism. The Federalist Party nominee, Senator Menachem Mendel Rubin, was an outspoken member of the proto-paleoconservative wing of the rightist ruling party. Between July and early September 1940, Galarian quietly recruited several officers from his inner circle into the planned self-coup, with a handful of non-military supporters such as Frank Posen brought in as well.
Prosperity's Triumph Incident
Reviewing records after the fall of the Galarian Regime, it is widely believed Galarian was behind the Prosperity's Triumph Incident with Ulthrannia on August 19th, 1940. The HIMS Prosperity's Triumph was fired upon by an Ulthrannic warship, loyal to the Los Reyes faction, off of New Shelvoy in the Far East.
Galarian and his political allies intended to use the confused reports over the incident as a casus belli to launch a colonial war with Ulthrannia, currently weakened as it was undergoing a civil war. It was surmised the General also did it to test how anti-expansionist both presidential candidates were in face of what was portrayed in the Provisa media as a clear case of a foreign power's attack on Belhavian interests.
Both presidential contenders vowed to use diplomacy and swore off war as a reaction. This, according to several officers close to Galarian who later testified about the events in his trial, was the last straw and pushed him over the edge to going through with the coup.
General of the Army
Appointment
On December 23rd, 1935, incumbent General of the Army Frank Efron died of a heart attack during a monthly military-readiness briefing in the Imperial Army General Staff building in Provisa. Within a few days, President Akiva Baron-Cohen instructed his staff to start putting together a list of suitable replacement candidates.
On December 28th, Senator Frank Posen told Baron-Cohen's chief of staff Asher Wolf that he favored Galarian, a recent war hero and rising star in the Army, as his personal choice and that if the president picked him, he could guarantee an easy confirmation process through the Senate.
By January 7th, 1936, Baron-Cohen's staff had narrowed the vetting list to just two - Galarian and fellow General Staff major-general Evan Podolin, an army old guard traditionalist. The President formally nominated Galarian two days later, and on January 31st, the Senate confirmed him on a 49-18-3 vote (aye, nay, and abstentions, respectively) as the new General of the Army.
Levan-Persky Scandal
The 9/5 Coup
The Galarian Autocracy
Style of Rule
The Stein Coup: Galarian's Fall
Midnight Mutiny
Post-Autocracy and Death
Arrest and Trial
Leibniz Commutation
Life at D'aarz Imperial Prison
Foreign Inspiration
Galarian's rise and reign inspired foreign supporters abroad, who took elements of his ideas or style of rule as their own.
In Prestonia, the Supreme Autocrat had gained sympathizers among the Prestonian General Staff, and after his fall, they reorganized their nation's army along Galarianist-inspired lines, centralizing the command hierarchy and other changes, while revamping defensive policy.
Across the world in Rodarion, the NCP was emerging as a major political actor as the Rodarian civil conflicts of the Years of Disunity were fading. The NCP based their ideology of National Catholicism in part of the strong-armed, centralized reign of Galarian in Belhavia.
Family and Personal life
Galarian was married to Hannah Davidson for five years (1913 - 1922), but they divorced when she failed to remain faithful to him while he was off in the Weissland Islands Rebellion.
He later married Rachel Grossman in 1925, and they had two children, both boys. Aharon Galarian was born in 1926, while his brother Yaakov was born in 1928. Rachel Galarian outlived her husband, living until 1984. After the Stein coup and his arrest and sentence, she changed her surname back to Grossman.
Aharon was killed in the Provisa Riots of 1944, though Yaakov survived. After being briefly detained after his father's overthrow, he changed his surname to Grossman as well. Galarianists, a very tiny minority of monarchists who believe that the so-called "House Galarian" was entitled to rule as "Supreme Autocrat," rallied around Yaakov as the legitimate heir. He left the country in the 1950s after the Galarianists were repressed by the Imperial Government. Yaakov Galarian would settle in Prestonia in 1956, living for a time under the Anglicised pseudonym "Jacob Gallery" and eventually earning his PhD in Economics from Hudson School of Economics in 1962. Upon attaining his doctorate, he reverted to using his birth name, a decision which would prove problematic; long believed dead by all but his father's closest confidants, his resurfacing brought with it a new spurt of fame and infamy, and increased pressure from the Belhavian government to revoke his residency upon the grounds that it was illegally obtained. By 1963, the government had acceded to this demand, and Yaakov was again expelled.
Personality Disorders
During and after his trial, Galarian was repeatedly given psychological examinations by psychologists. He was diagnosed with narcissism, megalomania, and on the spectrum for anti-social personality disorder.